


Sidhe

by Siyah_Kedi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Originally written in 2011, old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 19:10:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siyah_Kedi/pseuds/Siyah_Kedi
Summary: Apparently I went through three attempted drafts of starting this. No idea what it's about.  I'm only posting it here in case of emergencies.





	1. Draft One

Everyone knew about the sidhe, there was nothing unusual there.  Most people who had to pass by them made sure they carried either an iron circle, or else some gift of honey or flowers to appease the faie who lived within.  I was no exception; I’d been told nearly every night of my life to ask no questions, give no offense, and above all, leave the faie alone.

 For sure, I made certain to do and say nothing to arouse the anger of the faie.  There were still horror stories told around the winter fires about someone’s distant cousin who’d pissed them off, and had his crops destroyed, his livestock stolen,


	2. Draft Two

**(Parents need to be fighting about something. Don’t know what yet, will have to put this nifty little placeholder here to remind myself about it later.)**

Korrigan listened to the hateful words spewing back and forth between his parents, wondering how they’d gone so wrong as a family.  It might have been one of the Unseelie Faie playing a malicious prank, or, more likely, genuine problems.  It wasn’t so rare in this day and age for most couples to simply decide they were no longer compatible and split up.

Actually, Korrigan thought that divorce was probably more common than the Faie; some of the older townsfolk still believed in the Faie, still carried bags of rice and fairy buns around with them just in case of a chance meeting.  He believed that the older people were starting to go a little bit bonkers and might have to be locked up for their own safety.

As a firm believer in ‘if I can’t see it, it’s not there,’ Kori gave the Faie no more than half a thought.  Increasingly, he was preoccupied with his parents looming divorce and what it would do to them as a family.  Would he have to move?  Change schools?  Find new friends?  Which parent would he live with if they split up? Which one did he _want_ to live with?

His mother’s voice echoed through the vents.  “This is the same bureaucratic bullshit you always pull!”

Korrigan sighed.  Wafting up from the kitchen he could smell the blackberry pie his mum had put in to bake before the argument started; it made his stomach rumble in desperate appreciation, but he didn’t think he could handle going down the stairs and interrupting the fight in progress.  Maybe not his mum, if it came to it.

“I’m pulling bureaucratic bullshit?  What about your ( **INSERT INSULT HERE PLZ** )?”

Flopping backwards onto his mattress, Korrigan began to seriously reconsider his position in the family.  He was superficially aware that they probably wouldn’t split up, and that he wouldn’t be forced to make that sort of choice, but deeper in his heart he knew that ‘probably’ wasn’t worth taking a chance on.  If he wanted to do something with his life, he needed to get out and do it soon – before his mother split and took him with her.

What to do though?

Looking around his room for inspiration, his eyes settled at last on his book bag.  Walking over to it, he decided that he needed to get away for a few days.  His parents wouldn’t need him in the house to solve anything, he’d just be down the street at his friend Jeremy’s house, and it’d make him feel better.

Plan decided on, he emptied his book bag of his school books, and half emptied his drawers looking for decent things to wear.  A particular shirt eluded him, and he spent five frantic minutes searching for it.  The stairs creaked, and he froze, wondering for a moment if his parents were about to come upstairs and discover him in the act of running away.  Elsewhere in the house, a door creaked open and then closed with a slam.  Kori let out a deep sigh of relief, and found the shirt. 

He eased the window open and slipped out onto the terrace roof, creeping slowly across the tiles so as to not make any noise.  The ladder his father had put up to remove the Christmas decorations was still leaning against the gutter, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw it; no ten foot leaps to the ground tonight.

Overhead, the full moon was already visible, despite the setting sun still throwing its rays over the treetops.  He scurried down the ladder, book bag thrown over one shoulder, and sprinted quickly for the cover of the nearby trees before he looked back at the house.  He could see his mother through the kitchen window, wiping her face as she pulled the pie from the oven, and for a moment he wanted to go back to her, convince her he wasn’t running away forever, just a few days down with Jem to give them all some breathing room.   He’d actually taken a step back towards the house when he realised she wasn’t crying over him – didn’t even realise he was gone yet.  It was just the fight, pushing him to the back of everyone’s minds.  He tried not to feel bitter about it, and stopped thinking about it altogether when he failed.  Readjusting the straps of his bag, he turned around and started jogging resolutely into the forest.

 

2

The further into the forest he got, the harder it became to see.  For a moment, he wondered if it was because the trees were getting thicker before the rest of his brain caught up with him and reminded him that the sun was going down.  A second later, he realised he’d walked straight into the Faie woods without any sort of protection from enchantments. 

A flood of terror washed over him – he didn’t _believe_ in the Faie, he’d never seen one or heard of anyone being tricked or attacked by them within the last fifty or so years, but it was something he’d grown up hearing, and despite a carefully cultivated public disinterest, deep down in his heart he wondered if there might not be a kernel of truth to the stories after all.

He nearly turned around and headed back home, but a sense of ‘I can do this’ stiffened his resolve and he kept going.  If he was walking quickly, almost jogging, well, he kept telling himself that it was because it was dark and he wanted to get to Jem’s house before he couldn’t see the path through the trees any more.

His first clue that something was wrong was the strange echo of every step he took.  Every twig that cracked under his foot was followed by a leaf crunching somewhere further away.  Breaking into a full-out, no-excuses-made run, Kori didn’t even see the other boy until they’d literally crashed into one another.

Rolling in the dirt, feeling leaves, twigs, and other body parts pressing into him, he thought he was being attacked – mugged, even targeted for rape? Women weren’t the only victims – and he struck out with his fist, determined to get the advantage.  A pale white hand shot out of the darkness and wrapped around his wrist, stilling the blow before it connected.

“Shut up! What are you doing?”

Startled into silence by the tone of voice, he stilled, squinting through the darkness.  He could make out ashen grey features, soft in the diluted moonlight, and a wide-eyed expression reminiscent of – _fear?_

Defensive, nervous, Korrigan wrenched his hand out of the other boy’s grasp, startled by the strength in the slender arm.  “What am I doing?  What are you doing?  You ran into me!”

Gathering his wits, Kori rearranged his limbs so he could pull himself up off the ground.  He hadn’t risen more than an inch before the boy tackled him to the ground once more.  “You’re stupid if you think you’re getting up now.  They’ll find you, and if they find you they’ll find me.  Just stay down for a minute, and for the love of the gods, _shut up._ ”

Utterly flummoxed, he settled back into the dirt, keenly aware of a rock or a stick digging painful little holes into his ribcage.  The boy settled into motionlessness above him, only his flickering eyes betraying him.  After what felt like a full half hour, Korrigan wiggled; his legs were going numb, his back hurt, the rock in his side seemed to be burrowing in for the winter, and he was thoroughly uncomfortable.

“Can we – ”

The boy held one hand over his mouth, silencing him.  “Quiet; they’re still out there.”

Korrigan rolled his eyes, but closed his mouth.  An indeterminate amount of time later, the boy rolled off him and climbed to his feet, extending a hand. “I think we’re safe now.  Sorry for bumping you over like that.  My name’s Sebastian; yours is?”

Bemused, Korrigan accepted the proffered help, dusting himself off.  “Korrigan.”

Sebastian hauled him to his feet, and held onto his hand a moment longer than necessary, shaking it briefly.  “Nice to meet you, Korrigan.”

“Yeah, you too.” 

Sebastian’s head came up sharply, tilting to one side.  “Did you hear that?”

Korrigan listened, but didn’t hear anything.  He was about to say so when something suddenly grabbed at his book bag, hauling him backwards and nearly upsetting his balance. Sebastian shouted something unintelligible – everything seemed to be happening lightning quick, there were figures in the gloom around them, visible but not clear – his bag nearly tore his arm off – Sebastian had grabbed hold of his other hand, helping him slip free of his book bag, and then they were running. 

In the heat of the moment, he didn’t even consider who he was running from, or in what direction.  Sebastian’s tension and the fright of being accosted in the woods had translated themselves into a near panic.  It wasn’t until they passed the fairy circle that his wits returned, and by that time it was too late.

 

3

He didn’t believe in the faie, and he’d never really thought carrying rice around was a good defense.  He’d always avoided the sidhes and fairy circles more out of a grudging respect for the shrillness of his mother’s voice if she thought he’d been doing something wrong than any actual fear of them. 

But even for a resolute nonbeliever such as himself, the otherworldly tingle that covered his skin as they stepped over the ring of fungi and began climbing the sidhe couldn’t be ignored, couldn’t be discounted.  The light that erupted from the peak a moment later and enveloped them banished his doubt.

 

“You’ve gone completely mad! Barking! What the devil were you thinking, bringing me in here?” Korrigan paced back and forth in what looked like a lobby – what might have been a lobby if he hadn’t just walked through a fairy ring and into a sidhe.  It wouldn’t have bothered him so much if he hadn’t known that sidhes were just hills, fairy circles were just mushrooms, and faie didn’t exist, but that was yesterday and he wasn’t sure what to believe any more.

It didn’t help that Sebastian just stood there staring at him like he was a caged tiger at the zoo.  “I don’t really see what your problem is.  If you knew what was out there, you’d have been thanking me for saving your life.”

“Bloody good.  Thank you for saving my life, then, I guess.”   He raked a hand through his hair.  “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I need to go home.”

Sebastian shot him a dirty look.  “I’m not playing at anything.  This is very serious.  If I’d let you continue roaming through those woods, the Unsee might have mistaken you for me, and then you’d never have gotten home.  It didn’t, by the way, actually look like you were heading home in the first place. Don’t you live in the opposite direction?”

Korrigan stopped pacing long enough to give him an incredulous stare.  “How do you even know that?”

“Come on, I live in these woods.  I’m always out and about, and I see you there.  So what were you doing?”

Kori bit his tongue, trying to decide how much to tell him – if anything – in light of recent events.

They might have sat there for hours, staring at one another in silence if a woman – a girl, really – hadn’t flitted up to them, nearly screaming.

“Bastian!” She threw her arms around Sebastian’s neck, much to the surprise of both boys.  “We were so worried, you _prat,_ I thought you were dead!”

Korrigan took a surprised step backwards, wondering if he’d maybe fallen asleep and was now dreaming.  The girl – faie? – was _tiny_ , delicate-boned and graceful, and all of about five feet tall.  Sebastian hugged her briefly and pushed her away.  “We’ve got trouble, Báine.  The Unseelie were abroad in the woods.  They tracked me for hours, and this guy nearly led them right to us.  I had to bring him here because my choices were that or leave him there and we are supposed to be better than them.”

Korrigan was vaguely aware that ‘this guy’ was him, and wondered when they’d let him go.  He’d heard the stories of course, but always discounted them, and it was difficult

 

***

**RESTART HERE**

His mother was screaming  again, screaming at his father about how he was never home, how she worked a full time job, and still managed to be at home in the evenings to cook dinner and clean the house and take care of everyone.  Pots clanged onto the stove – Korrigan winced to hear the clatter, wondering what sort of damage she was doing to their cookware.  He couldn’t really bring himself to care about his dad – after coming home from school unexpectedly early one day and finding his father in the house with a strange woman while his mum was at work had pretty much destroyed his trust.

He lay upstairs in his room listening to the argument, the third that day, and wondered what it would take to see his mother smile again.

“You lazy bastard, you can’t even help me set the damn table! Would you prefer I bring you a beer – ”

A smashing sound cut off her tirade, and Korrigan sat up straight in his bed, trying to figure out what had happened.  As his mother’s voice rose to a wail, he figured it out.

“My great grandmother’s dish!  That was irreplaceable!”


	3. Draft Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ignore my author's comments.

_A hand wound tightly through his hair – long now, long enough to grab and hold – and jerked his head back, thrusting his chin up into the air.  He felt the dagger at his throat, the metallic smell of the blade mixing with the rusty scent of old blood.  Opening his eyes, he looked at Sebastian pleadingly, not for his life, but for his death._ Don’t let them kill me, _he thought, hoping his friend would hear him._ I’d rather die at your hand than let them kill me like this.

_He felt his captor suck in a deep breath, felt the muscles clench as he prepared to shout.  “Surrender or he dies!”  The knife tilted slightly, digging into his skin.  He felt a quick sting and the warmth of blood trickling down over his collarbone.  Another quick moment of tensing behind him, and that was it.  A split-second of thought, that he wished he’d been a better person and then - he knew his life was over and it was the funniest thing, he’d always heard your life flashed before your eyes just before you died._

_It was true._

_*_


End file.
